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Monday, September 8, 2003

A pink hotel, a boutique and a swingin' hot spot

It seems like the developers around here won't be happy until the road from Portland to the coast is just one continuous strip mall. When you drive west on U.S. 26 through all the over-development in Washington County, you just have to shake your head. A lot of that pavement of paradise wasn't necessary, isn't profitable, and is way bad for livability and the environment. Californication at its worst.

U.S. 30 used to provide a greener highway, but that's changing, too. Portland IndyMedia is hotly reporting on what it characterizes as a sweetheart mining and development deal going down out near Scappoose in Columbia County. Head on over and check out the story. I have no clue what's going on in those parts, but from what I'm reading, it doesn't sound good.

Comments (4)

But Jack, answering this kind of crappy strip development is exactly what the Pearl District and the Macadam South development promoted by mephistophelean (in your eyes) Homer Williams is doing! Every new apartment in the Pearl District is one less sprawling tract home along U.S. 26 in Washington County or U.S. 30 in Columbia County.

The only other answer is the one espoused by Alternatives to Growth Oregon. Is that where you are?

I don't have time for too lengthy a response right now, but I'll tell you what: Tall towers and aerial trams, all against the will of the existing neighbors and financed by scandalous tax abatement, aren't the answer to sprawl. Homer Williams isn't the answer to the desecration of the rural areas close to Portland. He's just the urban version of it, sending the crap vertical instead of horizontal.

There's so much more that could be done with the waterfront than skyscrapers. But there's not enough moolah in those alternatives for the Portland Development Commission and the select few that it makes multi-millionaires out of.

And it's not the tract homes on the west side that bother me so much as the particle-board apartment complexes, one after another. The Pearl isn't offering anything to the poor b*stards who have to live in those.

If we need infill, we ought to knock down the motel-looking junk apartments that Joe Weston (another Pearly) slapped up in inner southeast 30 years ago (after knocking down turn-of-the-century single-family homes). Put up in their place two or three stories that look like they belong in those historic neighborhoods. And some three- or four-story buildings and some nice town homes in North Macadam. With a big-ass park there, too, not the postage stamp tree museum that's on the boards now.

Nobody since Wayne Barnett has taught anti-basis like Professor Bogdanski. That said, he's all wrong about the pearl. All you have to do is ride the streetcar up to the Streetcar Lofts Starbucks and you'll see for yourself -- FINE women everywhere. Not like on the bus line. Not like the hairy-underarm vegan eastside neighborhood that Jack lives in. These girls are firm carnivores - just like the ravenous, unapologetic developers who built their 600sf lofts. Anyone who doubts that HOT HOT CHICKS are attracted to innovative public transportation should go SNOWBOARDING at Chamonix, France. You'll be scraping your lower jaw off the frozen ground because hot chicks love ariel trams. The Corbett neighborhood is full of haggardly housewives who want to prevent the influx of fresh talent. I'm glad Mayor Katz keeps it real.

Road Work

Miles run year to date: 113
At this date last year: 155
Total run in 2016: 155
In 2015: 271
In 2014: 401
In 2013: 257
In 2012: 129
In 2011: 113
In 2010: 125
In 2009: 67
In 2008: 28
In 2007: 113
In 2006: 100
In 2005: 149
In 2004: 204
In 2003: 269